Angelina McComiskey
angie personal cartography
seafood city
dissonance of a home (2005?, 1987?, 2008?)
the islands remember everything
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under quiet light, whispers fade together
curated by Angelina McComiskey in collaboration with Living Systems Gallery Living Systems Galleries | livingsystemsgallery.com Pilsen
Chicago, IL, 60608
2026
poster by Angelina M poster by @jassythebean (red)
Some memories announce themselves. Others remain, settling quietly into the cracks of the places we inhabit.
under quiet light, whispers fade together, bringing together six emerging artists whose practices explore memory through inherited materials, familial narratives and acts of making. These subjects intertwined itself in presenting the quiet language of home. Across printmaking, artist books, fiber, collage, photography and sculpture, the works consider how identity and history are carried through ordinary materials and imagery, everyday rituals, and objects we choose to cherish.
Presented in collaboration with Living Systems, the exhibition unfolds from within an apartment, where home becomes inseparable from the work. Rather than occupying a neutral show space, the artworks are woven into a lived environment, inviting viewers to encounter them as though they have always belonged there. Together they suggest that memory does not exist only in archives, but within the spaces we actively inhabit, rituals we repeat, and the everyday objects that whisper and quietly hold our stories.
leave gently
the house is still listening
Artists:
Aurelie Atowo | Angie Darianna | Ashlee Bonilla | Danny Villalobos | Emiko Akiyama Tahara
softly, it remains
curated by Angelina McComiskeyJames B Marco Gallery
3721 W Montrose Ave
Chicago, IL, 60618
2026
photos by Kelly Erdenebaatar, opening night
softly, it remains, a curated group exhibition featuring five emerging artists of Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander backgrounds whose practices engage the archive as both medium and strategy. Presented in May for Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the exhibition considers how personal, familial, and collective histories are preserved and reimagined through contemporary art.
Across photography, painting, video, and mixed media installation, the artists draw from inherent archives, family photos, documents, footage, and everyday materials, alongside constructed materials. Archival forms are reworked, where materialized history intersects with intimate and cultural memory. The works move away from seeing the archive as fixed or institutional, instead focusing on memory as lived and shared. They demonstrate how histories are passed down, altered, and remembered in ways that are personal and continually evolving.
The exhibition on a larger scale also reflects on how AAPI identities are shaped within and against the framework of the United States, where migration, assimilation, and racialization inform experiences of belonging and difference. In this context, the archive becomes a site of negotiation, where histories are reclaimed.
While situated within a month of recognition, this show moves beyond celebration to hold space for more complex narratives of history, migration, and resilience. It honors not only cultural identity, but the ongoing labor of memory-keeping.
Artists:
Miles Dharapak | Chloe Kim | Kelly Erdenebaatar | Alyvia Luong | Emiko Akiyama Tahara